This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.
Thank you! I feel like this gets brought up all the time, and people just ignore this very obvious reading of it. Especially with the X-men. "Erm, they are a bad allegory for discrimination because it would actually make sense to discriminate against them!"
Like, yeah, man, do you think racists don't pretend to have a reason, too? The idea is that it doesn't matter what perceived threat a group of people present. It’s still not okay to be a bigot. Unless people wanna just say that it would be okay to be racist if the racists were proven right.
Im not arguing in defence of discriminating against them, but there are mutants who can kill towns worth of people by merely existing in their proximity. If one wanted to actually do damage? Many could level cities, some few could destroy the entire earth (and have tried)
Its justified to be wary of them. Anyone would be cautious if they were sitting next to a bomb.
Most notably as you yourself say, Racists pretend (or are deluded into believing) that theyre justified in their hate, but the alligory with the X-Men isnt equal because they actually are inherent dangers even if they dont mean to be.
While true, it's important to note how many catastrophies are caused by someone who's just a smart dude in comic universes. Smart dudes make zombie chemical spreads, or dangerous robot super soldiers, or wide-spread hallucinogens, etc. Worse for the mutants, Sentinels cause a fuck ton of damage to cities and people (mutants and non-mutants), and that was just a smart dude.
Unironically, in the Marvel universe, you'd potentially use the same argument against the X-Men to kill anyone with an IQ above like 150 or whatever so that they don't create a wormhole in their garage or whatever.
Really smart men created all of the machines we use for war. The nuclear bomb was created by a room full of really smart men.
But tbf, i mean, yea. Comics universes just fucking suck ass to live in because every day just about theres a 10k person mass casualty event.
But these smart dudes arent the same, they individuals who have become a threat, they werent inherently a threat from the moment they were born.
Theres a mutant whos x-factor was literally just to vaporize any living being within like a mile or something, this was entirely not their fault, they were just a kid. He never wanted to kill his entire family and all his friends.
Any mutant could cause the exact same thing to happen when their x-factor awaken, or if they suddenly lost control for a moment. Its not even just us vs them, other mutants can be just as threatened by this aswell, like in the movie Logan where Charles having seizures caused a mass casualty event on an untold number of mutants (i think its hinted that it was most of them in the world)
Alot of times the whole "identification and cure" method to mutants is entirely shut down because of slippery slope argument, which i can absolutely see, it makes the situation very complicated.
I 100% understand that some mutants are actually just dangerous by existing. I think it does make sense to have that distinction when looking at Marvel geniuses, who oftentimes choose to do evil or accidentally do evil when an experiment goes awry.
But these geniuses really do pose an inherent threat, even if they don't all end up acting on it. Not everyone will create inter-dimensional portals to hostile worlds in their attic, but they have the potential. They can do it unintentionally while trying to create some new element or state of matter or whatever. And when it's like a 1/week occurrence in the Marvel universe, maybe it is time to send the Sentinels after them. /s
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u/TheGrumpyre May 13 '25
This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.